


her heart like the wind

by gaysandcrime



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Aurora is the most precious thing Maleficent has ever seen, F/F, Lesbians, Maleficent is accidentally a Good Friend, Maleficent is green and she is more beautiful because of it okay shes like a sexy leaf, Malora - Freeform, Wow these tags are a mess, basically self indulgent romance and angst, canon? whos that? i dont know her, guess ill clean them up later or somethin, i mean i love them and tbh they deserve to be happy, im writing this on zero (0) sleep and four energy drinks dont @ me okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-06-23 14:00:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaysandcrime/pseuds/gaysandcrime
Summary: Maleficent looks at her reflection in the water and wants to laugh. Perhaps it's no more than she deserves; after all, hadn't she started this whole thing because of the irony? And what could be more ironic than the villainous and wicked fairy falling in love with the princess who she has cursed to die?





	1. a common, simple girl

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Belledame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8316928) by [DesdemonaKaylose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose). 



> "her heart is like the wind, swift in love  
> cold in winter and warm in sun  
> circling the earth and shaking the trees  
> giving movement to the ocean  
> calming the seas  
> endless and boundless is wind,  
> immortal, free  
> her heart is for the world what her love is for me"  
> -M I Anderson

**chapter one: a common, simple girl**

Fifteen years and nine months – that is how long Maleficent had been searching for the girl. That is how long the Princess had been lost, that is how long ago the wicked fairy's curse had been weakened; changed from a death sentence to a useless sleeping curse, half as painful and inevitably less... permanent.

The wicked fairy had sent her ravens out to all the villages in the kingdom with instructions to find a child as beautiful as the sun itself, golden haired, pink cheeked and ocean eyed. When they had all come back with nothing, she herself had gone disguised as a bird, as a woman, as a cat. She had started at the point farthest from the castle and slowly moved inward until she'd done every village but the one closest to the palace itself. She'd wanted to scream, to light the sky on fire with her rage; how could they have managed to hide the child from her? Did they send her to another kingdom? Had they locked her away in the castle somewhere? Where could this girl, this _lost Princess,_ be? _How had she not found her yet?_

Maleficent was _certain_ they would not have hidden her so close to the castle walls. She was _certain_ even the idiotic King Stephen and his equally idiotic wife would have been more intelligent than _that._ But none of the other villages had a single extraordinary child, so she had searched the last village with little hope of finding anything helpful at all. She stayed at the forest's edge, hidden in shadows as her yellow eyes scanned impatiently, quickly, carelessly, over the crowded village marketplace. A perfunctory glance at best for what she knew to be a complete waste of time. And then –

_And then._

The Princess Aurora was not at all what Maleficent had been expecting. Hair like spun gold that shines in the sun, skin white and smooth and flawless, eyes as blue as the ocean and a voice like – like if the sunrise itself could sing: _that_ is what Maleficent had been expecting. That is what she knew the meddlesome good fairies had gifted her with. But this girl was blond – blond like any other common born girl, blond like straw or wheat or hay. Her skin was tan, not white, and it was covered in a thousand freckles, her hands calloused and her elbows gently scarred. Her eyes were blue, certainly, but that was all. Her voice was... fine. She could hold a note, sing in key, but was it stupendous? Magnificent? The most beautiful sound Maleficent had ever heard? No.

The Princess Aurora wasn't any different from the thousands of other girls Maleficent had combed through in the many villages within the kingdom. To put it plainly, she was simple, common and unrefined; perhaps there was a hint of royalty in the line of her jaw, or the curve of a cheekbone, and perhaps she was slightly taller than the other village girls – but that was all. Maleficent wouldn't have known it was her had she not seen the three fairies in their lazy disguises flocking to the child, their magical auras invisible to humans but quite obvious to another magic user such as herself.

“Rose, you mustn't let your hood down! There now, keep it up and stay to the shadows.”

“Yes, Aunt Flora.” The Princess's voice was soft as she straightened the hood upon her head until her face was hidden in shadow.

“And Rosie, I know you like to sing and chatter to those birds of yours, but do keep your voice down until you get closer to home.”

The Princess sighed, but spoke more quietly than before. “Of course, Aunt Fauna.” She placed a finger in front of her lips like she was hushing herself, and smiled like her and the insipid fairy were sharing a secret.

“Yes, yes, enough of that,” the third fairy said loudly, shoving Fauna aside. “Here, take this basket and collect the berries on your way back, dear. No use in you going hungry while we're away.” A basket exchanged hands.

“I promise to, Aunt Merryweather,” the Princess said as she hung the basket over he shoulder, being careful not to knock her cloak aside. “Thank you.” She gave each of the fairies a hug and turned away from them, stepping out of the sunlight and into the shade of the forest, not bothering to enter on the path. Maleficent's brows furrowed slightly. How odd.

Suddenly, all three fairies spoke at once. “And for all that is good, Rose, don't-,”

“Talk to strangers, I know, I know!” The girl laughed and turned back to wave at them. “Goodbye, Aunties, I'll see you in a few days.” And with that she melted backward into the shadows, no longer visible from outside the forest.

Maleficent's brows furrowed further. “Strange,” she murmured, and her voice sent the squirrel which had been crossing in front of her scurrying away. “How perfectly strange.” She smiled until her incisors were bared and let herself fade into the forest's darkness, a wildcat stalking its' prey. She had been certain, positive the girl would not be there. She'd thought she'd somehow missed something, thought somehow the Princess had been hidden away where all of Maleficent's considerable powers would be unable to find her. She'd been so _certain_.

Never before had the wicked fairy been so glad to be wrong.

As she swept through the forest, silent as the night, Maleficent watched as the young Princess lowered her hood and began speaking to the animals which were gathering around her. She took a moment to appreciate the irony that _this_ was the child who'd been blessed with fairy magic, this completely unremarkable creature who was standing before her. Maleficent smiled, and then like the predator she was, she pounced.

“My, my.” Her voice was naturally high, but she made sure to lower it until it settled in the air like snow, cold and heavy, a slow and sinister death. “Do your precious aunt's know how terribly you follow their rules?”

The Princess had stopped and spun around, her blue eyes wide. “Who – who's there?” She peered into the shadows of the forest around her, and saw only trees and foliage as Maleficent had hidden herself with magic, making her form nothing more than another shadow among the rest.

The wicked fairy answered the question with one of her own. “How does a young thing like you come to be alone in the woods?” Her voice seemed to come from everywhere all at once, and once again the Princess spun around until she was facing away from Maleficent.

“I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to speak to strangers,” the girl said slowly. She pushed her basket farther up her arm from where it had slipped and shuffled her feet.

“And yet, here we are, speaking,” Maleficent mused, chuckling darkly, and began circling the Princess slowly, her footsteps silent against the forest floor. This was a game she had played many times before; like a cat with a mouse, she would run her prey in circles until it became so tired it would give itself up rather than keep running.

“Only to tell you that I cannot speak!” Frustration overcame the fear in her voice, and the Princess Aurora spun around once more, her arms crossed over her chest in indignation.

“Oh, you cannot speak? Why, then I must redefine my definition of speech, for it sounds to my ears as though you are speaking, and yet, if you cannot, then I must be mistaken. Am I mistaken, little girl?”

The indignation had turned to confusion and then to earnest understanding in the span of a heartbeat. Maleficent watched the transformation with morbid curiosity, and let a sneer curl her lips. “Oh. No, that is – that isn't what I meant at all!” The girl's hands gestured as she spoke, and the basket slipped down her arm once again. “I meant I _can_ speak, obviously, but that my aunts don't like me to speak to – to anyone but them.” Her voice had quieted by the end and the understanding upon her face had changed instead to what Maleficent would have to term a melancholy resignation.

She felt her sneer grow. The girl wore her messy human emotions upon her face so obviously and without recourse. How perfectly disgusting. “I see. Well, that is a good rule, isn't it?”

“I, I guess.” The Princess looked down. Her misery was as obvious as every other emotion had been.

Maleficent feared her sneer had become a rather permanent result of the conversation. “You... guess,” she murmured scathingly, and watched as her tone pierced the girl like the blade of a knife.

“I mean, yes, yes of course it's a good rule,” Princess Aurora backtracked, the misery now sharing space with embarrassment and shame. “All of my aunt's rules are perfectly good.”

“Then you must cease speaking to me, mustn't you?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so.”

Maleficent's sneer dropped from her lips as she spoke her next words. “Might I ask you a question, little girl? You don't have to answer, of course, we wouldn't want you breaking the rules.” She stopped her circling and moved closer, so close that if she'd wanted to she could have reached out and touched the girls curls. “How, if you are not allowed to speak to strangers, can you ever make someone's acquaintance? It seems to me that you can't, for if you are not permitted to speak then how shall you ever ask a person their name?”

There was silence. The Princess's entire body seemed to have drooped in misery as Maleficent had been speaking, and now the girl was staring at the ground, her shoulders hunched in a way that made Maleficent want to slap her and tell her to fix her posture. This impulsive, intrusive thought made her suddenly angry, and she said instead, “I suppose I could give you my name freely and we'd be strangers no longer.”

Princess Aurora's entire demeanor changed in an instant; she went from hunched over in misery to standing tall, back straight, and smiling hopefully at the trees around her. Although she no longer had the distracting impulse to fix the girls posture, Maleficent once again felt herself sneer at the ludicrous openness of the Princess, and how absurdly easy it was to turn her from sadness to joy. She waited long moments in silence, watching the child's expression grow slowly brighter and more hopeful, before crushing it cruelly with her next words.

“Good day, little girl,” she said, “Try not to speak to any _other_ strangers on the way home.” This was said far more pleasantly than anything she'd so far contributed to the (rather one-sided) conversation. Maleficent took a single step back and disappeared as though she hadn't ever been there at all.  
  


+

  
“But wait! You didn't tell me...,” Rose sighed. “You didn't tell me your name.” Her shoulders slumped once again as she let her basket tumble to the ground. Her head ached, and her emotions felt drained from all the jumping around they'd done in the past hour. She'd known immediately the moment she was alone, because the world seemed much less sinister all at once. Everything had turned a little bit darker when the stranger had spoken. It had seemed to Rose as though the trees had moved closer together and their leaves turned such a dark green that they looked black. And the birds had stopped singing as well, she'd thought, or perhaps that was just Rose herself, blocking everything else out but that strange, melodic voice which had filled her with equal parts fear and curiosity.

The voice had also been, Rose thought suddenly, strangely familiar. Not in sound, perhaps, but in its' quality, the way it came from nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. It had fallen upon her like the night falls upon the day, but without a sunset to lighten the blow; and to be truthful, Rose wasn't quite sure what to make of it or its' owner. It reminded her of a song she'd once known, a haunting melody that she was certain was sung to her as a babe but which she could barely remember the basics of. Perhaps she'd ask her aunts when they came back in three days with their goods from the market. In the meantime, Rose hummed what she could remember of the song under her breath, trying to match a tune that was as fleeting in memory as a hummingbird upon a flower.

“ _Hmm...hmm, once upon a..._ a dream _.  
Hmm hmm hmm, visions are... _are...”

Rose sighed. “Never mind,” she said to the birds which had gathered upon a low hanging branch beside her. They regarded her with shining black eyes, and she smiled back, leaving thoughts of the stranger and the forgotten song behind her. “We'll just have to sing a different song, then, won't we?” She picked up her basket and set off through the trees she knew so well, collecting berries and mushrooms as she went and singing a much more familiar song under her breath.

“Oh, a silly little maid,  
had a tiny crooked house,  
she wore her basket as a hat,  
and a pretty purple blouse.

Oh, the woods were dark and grim,  
as one day she walked alone.  
And the wolf came upon her  
and begged her for a bone.

But the maid had none at all,  
only love and light to give,  
so the wolf said, 'Give them to me,  
and I promise you shall live.'

Now when you find that house,  
walls all painted white,  
you'll see the maid in her blouse,  
the wolf happy at her side.

Oh, the maid is in her blouse,  
and the wolf is at her side.”

By the time Rose came upon her home, she was singing the silly love song as loudly as she could, no longer wary of anyone but her woodland friends overhearing her.


	2. as remarkable as

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to get up, but I just really wasn't satisfied with it up until now. Tbh this chapter went through EXTENSIVE editing!!! Anyways.... uhh,,, enjoy?? :)

**chapter two: as remarkable as**

Maleficent paced the stone floor below her throne, her cloak of darkness flapping haphazardly in the chilled wind which rushed through her castle. The walls of her home were uneven, the stone crumbled and fallen away, leaving holes for the cold wind and her dark ravens to fly through. The birds were perched upon her throne, silent and forgotten as she tried to order her thoughts.

She had found her, the lost Princess, found her at last. The girl hadn't even known to be afraid! Maleficent knew her voice alone had sent men running, had frightened away the very bravest Princes and Knights. But the girl had spoken back; hadn't even noticed how the shadows grew darker, the air colder.

Had Aurora noticed how the leaves withered away, Maleficent wondered idly. Had she noticed each blossom wilting and shivering like a dead thing upon the ground? She flicked the thought away with a slender green hand. _Useless_. She needed to _think._ She felt the ever-present rage bubble up inside of her, and with a scream she let it explode, green fire filling the room in a giant wave, scorching the ceiling and singeing her feathered servants. She breathed heavily for a minute, her nails cutting into her palms as she clenched her hands into fists. They left tiny bleeding crescent moons which healed over the moment her hands relaxed, leaving her green skin smooth and flawless once more. The fire began to burn itself out on the unforgiving stone of her castle, and Maleficent took up her pacing again.

“The girl is close,” was murmured to the birds as she passed them by, their dark beady eyes following her every step.

“The girl is unprotected,” was sighed upon the wind as it swept through the room and brushed the feathers, which were woven into her cloak, against her face.

“The girl is... ,” _desperately_ _lonely,_ Maleficent heard her mind whisper within herself, and she stopped pacing abruptly. Yes, Princess Aurora _was_ desperately lonely, but what did that matter? It was neither here nor there, although she supposed if –

_If –_

Well. If the idiotic child was going to die anyways, and Maleficent was certain of _that_ , then what harm was there in occupying her time with idle conversation? For over a decade she had been alternatively searching frantically and destroying parts of her castle in her occasional bouts of uncontrollable rage; did she not deserve a little break? Was she not owed this, for all the work she'd done? And if the irony of such a thing (for there _was_ irony in it) caused her to laugh then all the better. The irony of making the child spend her last months alive with the fairy who cursed her, why, it was positively... _wicked._ And if the rude human king was going to insist that she was a wicked monster then, well.

If King Stephen wanted wicked, that's exactly what he was going to get.

+

Despite knowing what to expect, the cold still managed to take Rose by surprise. She was playing idly in the shallows of the river, and hadn't been expecting anyone to come, never mind the stranger from the woods she'd met the day before.

She let her hands dangle into the river water and watched the tiny minnows come to nibble harmlessly at her fingers. It rather tickled. “Hello again,” she said, not bothering to look up, knowing the stranger would be just as hidden now as they had been before. “I still don't know your name, so I'm afraid I still cannot speak with you.”

The voice was as she remembered, though perhaps a bit higher in pitch. “Maleficent.”

Rose continued to play absentmindedly with the minnows, now searching the riverbed for the smooth pieces of glass she sometimes found, carried downstream from towns far away. Her aunts never let her keep anything which might harm her, so she collected only the smoothest pieces – and still, she kept them hidden away in a handkerchief lest her aunts take them away from her. “Pardon?” she said absentmindedly, fingering a piece of yellow glass gently, wondering if its edges were smooth enough.

A quiet sigh. “My name, little child. So now you may speak, for we are no longer strangers.” The voice – no, _Maleficent!_ Rose thought excitedly – sounded amused.

"Maleficent," Rose whispered to herself, body practically vibrating with joy. “Oh, thank you! I wasn't expecting – only, last time we spoke, you left before you could, well. Thank you!” Rose straightened quickly, and ended up slipping on the smooth rock upon which she stood. “My name is Rose,” she managed to get out before falling over into the water, scattering minnows and pebbles alike. She huffed out a breath and stood more carefully than before, her dress now soaked through, the skirts heavy and dragging as she walked slowly out of the water. She'd lost her piece of glass in the fall, and unless she wanted to go diving into the deep part of the river she was going to have to give it up for good. And it had been such a pretty yellow one, too! Ugh. She huffed out a breath and tried not to pout.

“...Rose.” If Maleficent had sounded amused before, Rose thought she'd now have to say she sounded gleeful. Well fine, Rose could concede that it _was_ a bit funny. She was sure she'd find it much funnier once she was dry, though, so she pulled herself up onto the grassy bank and sat upon the ground in the sunlight, spreading her skirts around her.

She hummed thoughtfully. “Well, Briar Rose, actually, but everyone...” She paused. Everyone? Only her aunts had ever known her name before Maleficent, and saying everyone made it sound much more... well, _more_. “...Everyone calls me Rose.”

“I see.” It was said with something like disapproval, but Rose ignored it in favour of a question which, although she'd only just thought of it, now seemed like the thing she needed to know the most in all the world.

“Maleficent... is that a peculiar name? I don't suppose I've ever heard of someone named that before, but, of course, you are the first person I've ever spoken to, other than my aunties.” Maleficent sounded like a much nicer name than Rose – even Briar Rose. Like something a queen would be named, Rose thought wistfully.

“Quite.”

Rose was pulled from her thoughts immediately. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you! I just,” and here she turned wildly, not knowing which direction to face. “I've never had a friend before. I'm afraid I don't quite know how to – to talk to one.” She lifted her knees up and hugged them to her chest, wet skirts and all. Her eyes felt wet, and not from river water. “Please, don't leave. I didn't mean it.”

There was a pause, a silence in which Rose could feel her heart breaking. This was much worse than losing a silly piece of glass! She was so sure Maleficent had gone away, that she had hurt her and made her leave. _Some friend you are, Rose,_ she thought angrily to herself. _Can't even keep a new friend for a single day._

And then Maleficent spoke. “Is that what we are, Briar Rose? Friends.” There was something dark and foreboding in the way she said it, some menacing tone in Maleficent's voice which Rose wanted to dig up and examine. But she knew she was already on rather rocky ground, and so she left it alone.

She could hardly breath, she was so nervous she would still somehow manage to mess this all up. “I'd very much like to be,” she said quietly, “Friends, I mean.” She waited for what seemed forever for an answer.

“Well then,” Maleficent said, equally quietly back. “You should know that it takes much more than questioning my name to truly offend me.” Rose's heart soared.

She had a friend.

+

The girl was laying upon the ground like a peasant, nothing like the royalty she truly was, and Maleficent couldn't decide whether this made her more or less tolerable. 

“Why do you always stay hidden? I'm not so terribly frightening am I?”

Maleficent's brows arched up her forehead until they nearly met her hairline. “Excuse me?” This child, frightening? She thought of the way the girl had tipped over into the river and nearly cackled. Why, Briar Rose couldn't frighten a mouse even if she'd wanted to. She certainly didn't frighten Maleficent, the most powerful wicked fairy in all the realms.

“You mustn't be frightened, Maleficent. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise.” Rose had risen, lifting her upper body with her arms and glancing around with an earnest smile on her face, as though Maleficent were actually scared of her. Preposterous.

“I am not the one you should be worrying about, you stupid girl,” she said, not bothering to keep the sneer from her voice. She watched the child frown and recoil slightly. “I am much more likely to frighten you than you are to ever frighten me.”

The frown disappeared to be replaced with the same earnest smile as before. What an infuriating child! “How silly! You're my friend, I don't think you could ever frighten me. Please come out, I wish to see you.”

"No."

"Yes!"

"Absolutely not."

"Please?"

"I. Said. No." Her tone was hard and cold, like the unforgiving storm of winter. She watched as the Princess glanced up and around her, as if seeing for the first time the darkened skies and the withered petals which follow Maleficent wherever she goes. A rumble of thunder. A breath. And then - 

"Alright. Perhaps next time?"

Maleficent scowled. The air had become thick with unshed rain and it was making it hard for her to breath. She gathered her shadow around her like a cloak, and stepped back. "Never." 

When the first drops of rain began to fall, Maleficent was safely inside her castle walls. Away from the storm, and away from Princesses who don't know how to leave well enough alone.

+

The ground was muddy and damp when she finally returned to the river bank the next morning. Her jaw was tight, but something had made her come back, some curiosity. Would Briar Rose be there waiting? Would she not? Would she ask again?

The moment Maleficent reached the river bank she had her answers. There the Princess was, laying upon the wet ground the same as yesterday, with only her clothing changed to show that time had passed.

"Maleficent? Is that you? I know you said no yesterday, but I just- please, whatever it is that's stopping you, it shouldn't. You needn't be afraid, not that you are! But if, you know, if you _are_ , then well, you needn't be."

Maleficent had had enough. Let the girl see, she thought bitterly to herself. Then she would understand just how stupid she was being. “As you wish, then,” she whispered coldly, letting her cloak of shadows fall away until she was entirely visible, robe, skin, horns and all.

Briar Rose gasped. “Oh!” Her small hand came up to cover her mouth, and Maleficent felt vindicated. Had she not warned the girl? Had she not told her whom would frighten whom? And if she felt a small twinge of pain, well, it was hardly noticeable, and likely caused by having to listen to such idiocy for so long a time.

“Now do you see why I stay hidden, you foolish girl?” she said, and waited for the screaming to start, the running and cursing, the tears and pleas for mercy.

But Rose shook her head. “You're not frightening at all! Why, you're beautiful!”

Maleficent's heart seemed to stop in her chest. “...Beautiful?” She had been prepared for everything, it seemed, but that. She had no response, could not even seem to do more than stare. Was there something wrong with the Princess? Had she some alarming defect of the brain that Maleficent was not aware of, to make her see beauty where there was none? It seemed being raised in such isolation, with only three idiots for company had somehow broken the child.

“The most beautiful person I've ever seen.” The girl smiled, her face such an open book that Maleficent knew she spoke no lies. Her heart started up again, much more forcefully than before. Perhaps wearing one's emotions upon one's sleeve – or in this case, face – was not as terrible as she'd perceived it to be. It meant no ability for deceit, which Maleficent was sure she could use to her advantage.

She coughed to clear her throat, in which all she had been prepared to say, all she wished to say, was caught. “Fairy,” is what she said instead, and it would have to be enough.

“Most beautiful fairy, then,” Rose said playfully, and her blue eyes crinkled at the corners. Her hair was a wild mess of curls around her face, and maybe they looked a bit less like straw today than before.

Maleficent pushed down the urge to smile and looked to the side briefly. “Hmm,” was all she said in response, but it came out rather more pleased than she would have liked. Useless, utterly useless. And yet...

And yet. Why should she not derive some basic pleasure from these insipid conversations she forced herself to suffer through? Certainly there was nothing wrong with letting the child stoke the fires of her vanity?

  
+

“So that's what you are? A _fairy_. I've never known a fairy before.”

The girls voice was distant with wonder, and Maleficent could barely hold in her amusement at such an unknowing falsehood. If only the child knew her supposed aunt’s true identities, Maleficent thought. Then she could revel in the distress it was sure to cause her. As it was, Briar Rose would never know her 'aunties' real forms, nor would she ever understand the true difference between the insipid trio and Maleficent herself.

The Princess interrupted her thoughts with a question, as she often times seemed to do. “What's it like?”

“What is what like, child?”

“Being a fairy.” There was still a sense of wonder in her tone of voice when she spoke the word fairy, and Maleficent was inclined to let the intrusiveness of the question pass.

  
Her lip quirked upward, and she asked an intrusive question of her own. “What is being a human like?”

“Boring, at least for me.” Rose sighed. The enchanted expression in her eyes was gone, to be replaced with frustration and what seemed to be an attempt at censure. “Why do you always do that?”

Her voice, like the rest of the girl, was unable to mask an ounce of the emotion she felt, and Maleficent was certain nothing had amused her more in the last decade than this slip of a girl, trying to censure _her,_ Maleficent, wickedest of fairies. “Do what?”

“You did it again! Answer a question with another question. Do you not _like_ answering my questions?”

Maleficent dared not answer, knowing she would not be able to keep herself from laughing, and she could hear the injured and hurt way Briar Rose spoke her words and knew laughter would only make it more difficult to gain her trust. Which was, she reminded herself, the point of this whole idiotic notion of _‘friendship’_ in the first place.

“Should I stop asking them? I - I can try and be less curious, if that would please you.”

The girl sounded entirely earnest, and Maleficent knew she meant what she said, and would indeed curb her natural curiosity. Perhaps she would do more, if only to please Maleficent, perhaps she would do anything at all. Perhaps she would walk willingly to her death, knowing every wicked little thing Maleficent wished upon her, knowing exactly who she was and what she’d done. But it was too soon to be certain, and a wicked fairy did not stay in power very long with half thought out or poorly executed plans. And so she only raised her brows and stated, “No, Briar Rose, I should dislike it very much if you were to stop being so incessantly curious.”

“Oh.”

“It is the nature of humans to be curious. It is the nature of fairies to be reticent in the face of such curiosity. We must always be true to our natures.”

A tilted head and openly curious look was Rose’s only response for a minute. Then she asked, “What does reticent mean?” and Maleficent felt a well of fury rise up in her chest with an abruptness which took her by surprise. That the girl was nearly sixteen and didn't know the meaning of such a basic word made her all the more disdainful of the Good Fairies and their ability to raise a child. That Briar Rose was as bright and capable as she appeared to be, was in no way a credit to those three doddering fools; nor did Maleficent believe it was due to the girl’s Royal heritage. Her parents had, after all, entrusted their daughters care to the three aforementioned fools in the first place.

 _How dare they,_ she wished to scream. How _dare_ they treat this girl as if the only thing which mattered about her was her family name and the prettiness of her face? How dare they make so _little_ of the child I myself cursed? But Maleficent was aware of how utterly preposterous that sounded, even within the confines of her own head. She daren't speak the words aloud, not when the child before her had no knowledge of curses or Royal bloodlines, not when any of the forests creatures could hear and mock her for it. So instead Maleficent tucked her anger and upset away, and said, “In the current context reticent means to hold back from or fight against.” Just because the Princess was uneducated now, did not mean Maleficent should keep her that way. And besides, it amused her to be the source of this particular child's enlightenment.

“To hold back from... hmm. I think I understand.”

“Use it in a sentence.”

“So, you are... reticent against the idea that I might find you beautiful and not frightening. Right? Did I use it correctly?"

Silence. Silence, because that's all she could manage. How was it that this uneducated and unremarkable child   
continued to surprise her, to the point of speechlessness? It was... unconscionable.

“...Maleficent?”

Her heart and lungs shuddered back to life within her rib cage. She took a deep breath and said faintly, “Yes, that would be correct.”

“Oh, good. You know, I've learned much more in one day with you than I think I could ever have learned from reading the books at home.”

When the girl smiled Maleficent felt the breath she'd just taken catch in the back of her throat. For just a second, she could have sworn Briar Rose's smile had outshone the sun itself. Her breath came back and she let it out in a quiet rush from her lungs, which felt constricted and cold. It had been just a simple trick of the light, of course, but still. Her cheeks were flushed, she could feel it, and she wondered if she were getting ill. Perhaps a fever? Yes, of course, the only logical explanation.

Yet still... for a moment there the girl had been as remarkable as Maleficent always expected her to be.

_As beautiful as the sun itself._

When Maleficent left that day, she told herself she would not go back. She had gotten what she wanted; the trust of the Princess Aurora, to make the darkness of her curse all the more a sweet betrayal. She told herself, pacing as she did before her throne, that it was finished, she was finished, and now she would wait. Conversation had been made, she’d even managed to derive amusement from the child's idiocy; what greater victory was there to be had? None, and so she would leave well enough alone and wait for the child's sixteenth birthday as she'd always planned to.  
She sat herself upon her throne, her ravens scattering in the biting, frosty winds from outside. Her vigil had begun. 


End file.
